Backup Solutions

[billybobsky]

One year ago both of my computers kicked the bucket within a two week period. First my PowerBook jumped to its death off of my lab bench and then my PC ate two hard drives. Because I didn't really back things up I lost a lot of what I had excluding the important documents I had emailed to myself. Its a year later, and I am nervous. I am actually building up a largish number of documents again and still have yet to begin regular backups -- I just don't see myself burning dvds of all of my stuff every month especially since I have had some bad experience with the cds i burned of my data before I graduated college -- what did ultimately work post-college was an external hard drive that I had copied my life onto.

So... How do you keep your files safe; I am looking for a solution that requires the least amount of file duplication as possible (I don't think I need to backup my music, for instance, every month)?

[Joshua]

I'm somewhat in the same boat.

To be honest I'm just crossing my finders until Time Machine comes out.

[billybobsky]

Anyone have any experience with retrospect?

[NosferaDrew]

I have a second, identical HD in my G5 that I use to back up my internal every night using SuperDuper! (http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/13803) - just set it and forget it.
I also use SuperDuper! to back up my MacBook Pro to an old iPod every weekend or so.

It's well worth the $28.

[NosferaDrew]

Anyone have any experience with retrospect?

We have 22TB of storage where I work and we use Retrospect for backup and restoring to AIT2.
It's a little clunky searching for files to restore, but it works well enough. Never had any failures or issues.

[FFL]

Retrospect is pretty good for big server backup but sucks ass for individual use.

SuperDuper FTW.

[billybobsky]

hmm... i am trying apple's backup on my laptop, but I need something for my pc... any ideas?

[Jerman]

I am just starting to delve into the world of rsync. Maybe Brad could answer my question on this, but does rsync preserve data forks or whatever the heck it is? Reason I ask, is I am beginning to rsync backup all of my home folder's contents to a remote server. (Via ssh of course). Going to be doing nightly syncs of my data.

And taking it a step further, my main website is hosted on a remote sever. Using rsync and cron to automate nightly backups of everything, by logging into my machine via ssh remotely and running the backup to my machine.

But you are no doubt looking for something more user friendly. :) About the only backup experience I have had is using carbon copy cloner on a weekly or so basis to make a clone of my hard drive.

[Sauvblanc]

When the copy of RetroSpect that came with my Maxtor drive didn't work, the IT guy at work pointed me to an app called SwitchBack (http://www.glendower.co.nz/switchback.html). It'd shareware/donationware. Pretty simple but it works fairly well.